Tweet the Meeple

Older Reviews

Do you like the Chinese Ghost Story movies? How about cooperative games? Now roll this to things into one, how does that sound? Ghost Stories is exactly that: you defend a small village from the forces of Wu-Feng who is about to rise from the dead.

Contrary to most places you go to eat now, modern sushi was originally a type of fast food if Wikipedia is to be believed. It’s thus very fitting that Sushi Go! is a fast food type of game: you play it quickly, with no preparation needed, and then you go back for a second helping. Unlike fast food, however, you don’t have to feel guilty after Sushi Go!, it makes you neither fat nor sick, only entertained.

Not every game can be a brain-twisting, deeply strategic game. A gaming evening/weekend/vacation needs the fillers, the quick, light games that nevertheless everyone enjoys. And that’s where Pickomino, a game that you wouldn’t expect to show up in a serious gamer’s play time, has its niche.

The 1960s are upon us. Beatlemania. Marilyn Monroe. Breakfast at Tiffanys.
In Berlin, however, a wall not only divides two cities – it separates worlds. Nowhere on the planet are the two superpowers closer, their differences more visible. Beneath the surface, however, it is the similarities which are equally striking. Checkpoint Charlie was one of the few checkpoints between West and East Berlin, heavily guarded and watched. It was also the central checkpoint through which Spies passed from one sector to the other. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sniff around for the Chief of Spies trying to make it through Checkpoint Charlie undetected. And you can take the sniffing quite literally, as each player assumes the role of a dog, representing the K-9 division.

Five years ago, the Lamont Brothers created a racing game with an uncommon setting. Snow Tails wasn’t about racing cars, motorcycles, speedboats or spaceships, it was about racing dog sleds. This year, they’ve returned to mushing with Mush! Mush! – Snow Tails 2, a new racing game that uses the same basic mechanics but is different enough to make it exciting again. And, as you expect from Fragor Games, it looks great as well.

Some countries just don’t manage to form a stable government, but the unnamed kingdom of Council of Four is ridiculous even by those standards. Influential merchants, the players, exchange councilmen in any way that best serves their interest. If the current council can’t be bullied into writing a business permit, they just replace them. And whoever does that best wins the game.

Building a dynasty of nobles, how much drier can the concept of a game possibly sound. Have children, marry them to other families, repeat until rich and and famous. I was happy to find out that this prejudice was dead wrong. Despite its theme, Among Nobles is anything but dry, it has a great balance of simple rules, strategic decision and player interaction.

I admit, I didn’t expect that one day a traditional, competitive eurogame would be in the majority for the Kennerspiel des Jahres selection. But here we are, next to Pandemic Legacy and T.I.M.E. Stories, both cooperative games with a limited number of replays in the box Isle of Skye is the only competitive game with virtually unlimited replayability. Lets have a look if it’s worthy of the nomination.